NCIIP: Early Childhood and K-12 Education

Approximately 5 million English Language Learner (ELL) students are enrolled in K-12 public schools throughout the United States, representing nearly 10 percent of all students. These fact sheets, drawing upon data from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey and the Department of Education, examine the geographic distribution and top languages spoken by these students nationally and by state.

With the young child population in the United States rapidly becoming more diverse, the cultural and linguistic competencies of the early childhood education and care workforce (ECEC) are more important than ever. This report aims to fill gaps in knowledge of immigrants and refugees in the ECEC workforce and provides recommendations for strengthening workforce quality to better serve all children.

The recently created White House Task Force on New Americans in April 2015 submitted a National Integration Plan to President Obama, offering recommendations for federal actions to further immigrant integration. Proposals made to the Task Force by MPI's National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy and others to support immigrants' linguistic, economic, and civic integration are collected here, as are other resources.

Immigrant adults in the United States lag their native-born peers in literacy, numeracy, and problem-solving skills, with resulting effects on their income, employment, education, and health, according to MPI analysis of U.S. scores on the 2012 Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). The findings, which reveal wide ethnic and racial gaps in scoring, underscore deep U.S. social inequalities.

Since its launch in 2012, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program has intertwined immigration policy and the education and training fields in an unprecedented way. Based on fieldwork in seven states, this report examines the ways in which local educational institutions, legal service providers, and immigrant youth advocates have responded to the first phase of DACA, as well as the program's effects on students' educational and career aspirations.

Want the latest estimates and characteristics of unauthorized immigrants in the United States, including their potential eligibility for deferred action? Use this innovative data tool to get population estimates and much more—including countries of origin, recency of arrival, educational enrollment and attainment, industries of employment, incomes, parental and marital status, and English proficiency—for unauthorized immigrants at the national level, by state, and for top counties. Click here to get started.

Pages

Recent Activity

This report examines how a parent’s unauthorized status affects child development. Based on a review of existing research that increasingly points to negative developmental consequences of parental unauthorized status across all stages of childhood, the authors explore possible options for policies and programs that could mitigate these risks, and propose ways to achieve this goal within the framework of proposed comprehensive immigration reform.

This report, Volume 1 of a three-volume set commissioned by the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation that examines the immigrant population in Arkansas, provides a demographic and socioeconomic profile of Arkansas immigrants and their children, including a description of immigrant workers in the Arkansas economy. The three volumes build upon a previous study of the Arkansas immigrant population that was published in 2007.

The event discussion, which touched on the intersection of race and immigration, focused on the demographics of Black immigrants (both African and Caribbean) in the United States and their children, their educational success, and the implications of the recently released volume’s findings for research and public policy.

This interdisciplinary volume examines the health, well-being, school readiness, and academic achievement of children in Black immigrant families (most with parents from Africa and the Caribbean)—a population that has had little academic attention even as it represents an increasing share of the U.S. Black child population.

Using a nationally representative U.S. birth-cohort study, this report examines levels of school readiness among young children by race/ethnicity and nativity. The authors identify the contextual factors — such as family circumstances, parenting practices, and enrollment in center-based child care — that encourage early school success.

Join MPI as U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Alejandro Mayorkas discusses the application process and policies that the agency has announced to implement the administration’s deferred action program.

This fact sheet provides an estimate of the number of DREAMers—unauthorized immigrants potentially eligible for a two-year reprieve from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals initiative—based on eligibility criteria outlined by the Department of Homeland Security. It also offers a detailed analysis of the demographic characteristics of prospective beneficiaries.

This report finds that the 813,000 U.S. children under the age of 10 who have Black immigrant parents from Africa or the Caribbean generally fall in the middle of multiple well-being indicators, faring less well than Asian and white children but better than their native-born Black and Hispanic peers. Citizenship status, English proficiency, parental characteristics, poverty, housing, and access to social supports are examined.

Pages

About the National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy

The demographics of the child population in the United States and its elementary and secondary schools are changing rapidly as a result of record-high immigration, growing national origin and linguistic diversity, and immigrants’ increasing geographic dispersal. Sustained high levels of immigration have also led to a rapid increase in the number of children with immigrant parents.

Immigrants represent one in eight of all U.S. residents, and their children represent nearly one in four of all children under age 18. While immigrant youth are often among the top performers in schools nationwide, large numbers of them have low-educated parents, come from low-income families, and arrive in U.S. schools speaking very little English. These factors can make their path to educational success more difficult.

The growth of immigrants is mirrored in the growth of English Language Learner (ELL) students in U.S. public schools. Federal regulations require that schools identify ELLs and implement language instruction programs for them, and that these students make yearly gains in English proficiency. In addition, ELLs must be tested in academic content areas using standardized state tests and their scores must be separately reported as a subgroup, with schools held accountable for the ELL subgroup’s performance.

The research offered here examines the early childhood and K-12 realities experienced by the children of immigrants.